British Quotes

Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.

Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.

Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.

But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next.

All experience is subjective.

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.

You've got to have steel in you somewhere.

You can't always go by the book, even in comedy.

You can time a part perfectly and play it badly. And some people have very individual offbeat timing, which is their own. It works simply because they are who they are.

People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do.

No film should try to follow a trend, and do what film people think the public wants. There's no such thing as knowing what the public wants.

I've never believed much in that holding hands kind of love. I've always thought that love is about two different personalities trying to confront life, trying to make sense of their responsibilities, to themselves, to each other, and to the wider society.

I think that can happen, that two people can love each other and not be able to get on at all.

I think actors are privileged. Acting feeds you.

I have always tried to work according to what affects me, to a script that I like because it touches me in some way, without deliberately pursuing a commercial career or a particular image.

I do believe in living out your own time, unless it's absolutely impossible, which it is for some people.

An emotional performance is usually more instinctive to an actor.

Occasionally I do things against my inner voice, but you really should go for the thing that touches you most-even if you don't quite know why it does.

You say he's childish, but he's very professional about business transactions.

We wanted to make sure that the film covered the main issues of his life. Musicianship, appearance.

This was almost two hours of factual documentary. In our audience ratings, barely no one left the programme. The whole of his life is so fascinating and people kept watching for that reason.

The Thriller album is still the biggest album of all time. That is still returning huge royalty cheques.

The first time I ask him, have you had your cheekbones raised, have you had your nose changed? He denied it all. I was asking him to compare his face with what it looked like years ago.

The film was fair to his musical achievement and gave him every opportunity to explain himself.

The children don't wear their masks at home and in controlled surroundings.

Press coverage has been difficult for him. I did not set out to ensnare him with a child.